What happens when the lofty ideas of the faculty lounge are turned loose into the semi-free market? You get a trainwreck. This most recent trainwreck is called Obamacare. It is shocking to me how many people seem to be surprised that the rollout of the Obamacare has been a disaster. Even more baffling is the surprise of people who are just figuring out that this was a terrible implementation of a respectable and decent societal objective.
Despite what Obama, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, Chuck Schumer, and the other democrat propagandists say, republicans and libertarians to not want people to lack for the basic necessities of life. A social safety net for those who are down on their luck, made a couple of bad choices, or were born into circumstance that was less than positive is a good thing, a moral thing, and a decent thing. However, there are many means to provide a social safety net and central planning from the federal government, as we are seeing to the dismay of many, is probably the worst way to provide most any social service beyond the military, the supreme judiciary, and interstate highways.
What the faculty loungers like Obama and his inner circle of government loyalists fail to realize is that they might be the smartest folks in the room when they are in the classroom or the faculty lounge, but when they get into the real world where people and organizations have to compete to survive, where tenure equates to the coming two weeks for your next paycheck, meeting next month's payroll, or making next quarter's earnings report, there are thousands, maybe millions of people as smart or smarter than they are. When grandiose central plans, created by a select few of like-minded minions with swanky diplomas are released into the wild, they set the rules of of the road, the limits of the game, and millions of smart, motivated people who don't have tenure or fat government pensions start figuring out how to work the new rules of the game to their advantage...how to win playing by the new rules.
Therefore, it is shocking that the Ivy Leaguers who wrote Obamacare were caught off guard when thousands of companies started limiting employee hours to under 30/week to avoid the costs of hiring or holding full time employees as dictated by Obamacare. What did the central planners think was going to happen? Companies are in business to make money, to win, to succeed in a brutally efficient market place. If there is a way to avoid costs that is not only legal, but rational, then guess what is going to happen? A room full of faculty lounge smarties and government lackeys will never outsmart a market of motivated entrepreneurs. Never. So there will always be unintended consequences as a result of the most well intended plan which will doom it to absolute failure - 100% of the time, given enough time. Obamacare is the most recent and public display of this reality. The ridiculously complex system intended to provide the sick, the poor, and the uninsured with healthcare had no chance to work. Ever. Obamacare proposed to cover 30M uninsured Americans, eliminate lifetime limits on insurance policies, and save the average household $ 2500...all at the same time? On paper and over a latte in the faculty lounge, I have no doubt that this makes perfect sense. However, in the world of rational consumers and smart business leaders, at best it is a bad joke, at worst it is a total failure with lasting negative ramifications on both healthcare and the economy.
It is clear from his statements and actions that Obama thinks he is the smartest guy in the room. Based on what we have seen from his administration on policy, I hate to break the news to him, but I'm not sure he's even the smartest guy in the faculty lounge, but I have no doubt he thinks he is.
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